Bandwidth
For everything you choose to exert effort on, there’s an equal and opposite decision to not exert effort on the horde of other things vying for your time and attention. Sometimes this choice is explicit, sometimes implicit. Your actions are the bobbing cap of the iceberg of your to-do list.
Even amidst the pandemic there’s still FOMO. Could you be doing something better? Having more fun? Doing something more worthwhile?
We’ve been weaned on a diet of short-term dopamine hits to neglect the long-term. It’s the niggling sense that although you should be tending the furrow you’ve so painstakingly ploughed, sewed, and nurtured over the months, there’s something fun and new that could be more immediately rewarding.
The big, difficult thing can wait. There’s always tomorrow. The sun might only shine today.
How quickly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon turn to weeds and brackish growth.
This is opportunity cost, in other words. What are you giving up in order to do the thing you’re doing at this very moment. What could you be doing when instead you’re doom-scrolling? Go do the thing.
